Tag Archives: Government of the United Kingdom

The Conservative government of David Cameron has failed the British people as thoroughly and resoundingly as the Republican Party has failed the American people. Both could have and should have constituted themselves as a loyal opposition, departing from the Leftist line. Instead, they have parroted it in innumerable ways, and disenfranchised millions of their constituents by offering no alternative to the dominant paradigm.

New revelations about why I was banned from entering Great Britain reveal how deeply compromised the British government is to hard-Leftists and Islamic supremacists – including the most virulent haters of Israel.

As faithful FrontPage readers may recall, last June I was banned from Britain because, as a letter from the U.K. Home Office told me, “your presence here is not conducive to the public good.” Why not? Because I said (quite factually) that Islam “is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society.” And also because, the letter said, “you are the founder of the blog Jihad Watch (a site widely criticized for being Islamophobic),” and “you co-founded the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, both of which have been described as anti-Muslim hate groups.”

Note the passive voice: the Freedom Defense Initiative (actually the American Freedom Defense Initiative, AFDI) and Stop Islamization of America “have been described as anti-Muslim hate groups” by whom? The letter didn’t say. And Jihad Watch has been “widely criticized for being Islamophobic” by whom? The letter gives no hint, instead attempting to establish these charges as the judicious assessment of neutral observers.

Now, however, newly released documents relating to our case, as Pamela Geller discussed in a recent Daily Caller article, reveal that the Home Office’s decision was guided by far-Left agitation groups with a deep animus against Israel.

Of course, this was already obvious from the Home Office’s repetition of the charge that Jihad Watch is “Islamophobic” in its letter to me. “Islamophobia” is a manipulative and propagandistic neologism designed to intimidate non-Muslims into thinking that there is something “bigoted” and “racist” about resisting jihad terror and opposing Sharia oppression of women, non-Muslims, gays and others. The only people who use it at all are Islamic supremacists who want to clear away all obstacles to the advance of jihad, their Leftist allies, and those whom they have bamboozled into thinking it is a legitimate term of discourse – such as the British Home Office.

So it was obvious already who was whispering into the Home Office’s ear, but now it is confirmed. As Pamela Geller noted, in the newly revealed documents “all reference to the identities of those who asked that we be banned have been blacked out.” However, “their black marker missed one reference, revealing that one of the groups complaining about us was Faith Matters. Faith Matters was founded by a Muslim named Fiyaz Mughal, who also heads up Tell Mama, a group dedicated to tracking ‘Islamophobia.’ Tell Mama lost government funding in June after making false claims of waves of attacks ‘Islamophobic incidents.’”

So around the same time that Tell Mama was being stripped of its government funding for lying about the prevalence of “anti-Muslim hate crimes,” that same government was accepting its advice and counsel in favor of banning Pamela Geller and me from the country. Was the Home Office unaware that Tell Mama was wildly exaggerating “Islamophobia” in Britain, and was thus an untrustworthy source for any information related to it, or did it simply not care?

Hate preachers are allowed to address audiences with no complaint, but critics of these hate preachers are silenced.

Last month, a scholar and critic of Islam, Robert Spencer, was barred entry to the UK, while one of the objects of Spencer’s disapproval, Muhamed Al-Arifi, was admitted to Britain with no objection at all from the British government.

Spencer’s comments about Islamic extremism were apparently considered too incendiary; Arifi, however, describes the killing of “infidels” as a “great honour” and advocates the murder of Jews. On IQRA TV, he states that:

What was taken by force will be restored only by force, as conveyed by the Prophet Muhammad, who said: “You will fight the Jews.” He did not say: You will conduct negotiations, they will make concessions, and then you will make concessions, and then we will reach a compromise and divide Jerusalem… By God, Jerusalem will not be divided. He said in the hadith: “You will fight the Jews and kill them.” It was the Prophet Muhammad who said this, not me.

Spencer has never advocated killing anybody; and, incidentally, in British law, supporting the murder of others is a crime.

It seems that increasingly, especially when it comes to Islamism, there are those in the West who work to silence the critic rather than the criminal, and often more attention is paid to the critics of extremists than to the extremists themselves. It is true that our enemy’s enemy is not necessarily our friend, but we need not apply such double standards in our response.

Opponents of free speech, such as Matthew Collins — spokesman for the “anti-fascist” group, Hope Not Hate, which lobbied for Spencer’s exclusion – claims that, “[Voltaire] never had the benefit of going to the gates of Auschwitz and seeing where unfettered free speech ends up.”

The West’s submission to Islamist thugs has largely been inversely proportional to the West’s commitment to free expression and honest discussion of its disputed limitations. Writers such as Nick Cohen and Kenan Malik regularly make this point. Cohen describes the censorship imposed — in an effort to appease the Islamist-led rioters — by Western governments around Salmon Rushdie’s novel, The Satanic Verses, as the “Dreyfus Affair” of our age.

There evolved, soon, another sort of censorship: the suppression of one person’s criticism, supposedly to defend another person’s right to free speech.

The London School of Economics’ Student Union, for example, is happy to approve anti-Semitic and pro-terror speakers. In response, however, to a student society publishing a satirical cartoon that mocked religious extremism, the Union in 2012 tabled a motion that proclaimed blasphemy a form of racism. Ironically, the motion concluded: “There is a special need in a Students’ Union to balance freedom of speech.” What “balance”? While hate preachers are allowed to address students with no complaint, critics of these hate preachers are silenced?

Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park, London was once renowned for being the embodiment of freedom of speech where anyone could appear and speak about anything. In recent years, Islamist speakers have flocked to Hyde Park to deliver their rants and rampages.

A British convert to Islam declaimed there, “I do not believe that absolute freedom of speech is a good thing. The West doesn’t really believe in that freedom either. No one is free to say exactly what they want.”

The British authorities have come around to agreeing with him. Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller have been informed that they are banned from the United Kingdom.

The letter to Robert Spencer informs him, in Orwellian language, that the Home Secretary believes that he should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that “your presence here is not conducive to the public good.”

Some figures whose presence is conducive to the public good include Abu Qatada, an Al Qaeda figure who has yet to be deported, and Anjem Choudary, who helped inspire the recent bloody murder of Lee Rigby.

MP Keith Vaz, who led a march calling for a ban on Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” called for the ban on Spencer and Geller. And the British government has complied.

While every Islamist leader from around the world has found asylum and taxpayer-funded homes in the UK, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller are too dangerous to allow into Londonistan.

A Wikileaks cable revealed that fear of offending Muslims convinced British governments to grant asylum to Islamist leaders. And now fear of offending Muslims has convinced the British government to keep out the people warning of the danger.

Successive British governments continue to tolerate the existence of large charities that encourage and provide for Islamist terror groups. By failing to separate British Muslims from the Islamist charities that exploit them, we flatter and legitimize supporters of terrorism as humanitarians and community leaders. In the US, the charity Interpal is a proscribed organization: when you help terror groups build homes, you are also helping terror groups build bombs. In the UK, however, Interpal is a leading charity that provides support for terror groups. What is Interpal, and why isn’t the British government shutting it down?

For hundreds of years, London has mostly been a welcoming home for extremists who wished to destroy the very freedoms the city afforded them. It was here that 19th century nihilists such as Bakunin and Nechayev freely disseminated their violent ideas. In the 20th century, Soviet money seeped into our trade unions and lobbying groups. And now, today, London is a hub for Islamist and Arabist terror infrastructure. It is a city from which financial and logistical support sustains violent supremacist movements across the world. A few months ago, Lord Alton of Liverpool told the British parliament that he believed the Al Muntada Trust, a large London-based charity, is funding the Nigerian Al-Qaeda terrorist group Boko Haram[1]. The speakers at events previously hosted by Al Muntada have described Jews as the “descendants of apes and pigs” and have called for the execution of homosexuals and adulterous women[2]

We do not, however, just idly tolerate anti-Western groups in our midst and abroad; the harder truth is that government is often complicit with their activities, and when caught, our elected leaders simply refuse to discuss the facts. A recent report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) revealed that British taxpayers are contributing towards the $4.5 million paid each month to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, including terrorists and mass murderers. Despite the evidence gathered by PMW, the British Foreign Office continues to deny that British money is rewarding terrorism. In a letter to Robert Halfon MP, who had voiced his concern at the findings, the International Development Minister Alan Duncan wrote: “We have investigated the matter fully and can confirm that the allegations in Palestinian Media Watch’s report are both inaccurate and misleading.”[3] Duncan did not say how the report was inaccurate, and nor did he provide any sources or facts to back up his claim. As PMW sharply responded, “the general statements made by the Minister of State in his letter, which lack any sources that contradict PMW’s findings, are wrong”. [4]

This is unfortunately not the first time the British government has just rejected the accusations rather than examine the evidence. Several years ago, a report by the Taxpayers’ Alliance revealed that £100 million in British aid to Palestinian schools was funding textbooks indoctrinating children with pro-terror and anti-Jewish propaganda[5]. Similarly, rather than properly investigate, the government simply dismissed the claims as baseless. Why do politicians and the vehicles of government knowingly allow themselves to be complicit with groups that advance pro-terror and anti-Western ideas?

Look, for example, at a large organization called Interpal. Although in the UK it is a well-established charity which has enjoyed the support of leading British politicians and cabinet members, in the United States Interpal is designated a terrorist organization. What is Interpal, and why isn’t the British Government shutting it down?